Criminal?

Posted Oct 1, 2024 20:31 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
Parent article: The WordPress mess

It'd be really funny if any of the threats that Automattic made against WP Engine were legally actionable crimes, since they seem to be well documented, although prosecutors tend not to go after those with deep pockets if they can avoid it as those cases can consume a lot of resources and they are unlikely to win.

Criminal?

Posted Oct 4, 2024 1:00 UTC (Fri) by yeltsin (guest, #171611) [Link]

Maybe: https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint...

I know very little about the US legal process, but this seems important enough to maybe update the article, or even post a separate news entry?

Criminal?

Posted Nov 2, 2024 10:22 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (1 responses)

Nah, it's two companies fighting each other. I don't see why the government should get involved - they only do and should when the public gets harmed. And here, public doesn't really mean 'customers' either, after all - if you have a contract with WP Engine and they don't deliver, they are to blame. If they decided to depend on a 3rd party without a contract because they're trying to make their VC investors as much money as possible by contributing as little as possible to the ecosystem, well - their fault, you can sue them.

Sadly this is the 'business model' of a lot of companies, leaching off of open source projects. Not sure what to do about it, we as community have to find some solution that doesn't mean going closed source or doing stupid shit like Automattic - tricky.

Criminal?

Posted Nov 2, 2024 15:16 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Nah, it's two companies fighting each other. I don't see why the government should get involved - they only do and should when the public gets harmed. And here, public doesn't really mean 'customers' either, after all - if you have a contract with WP Engine and they don't deliver, they are to blame. If they decided to depend on a 3rd party without a contract because they're trying to make their VC investors as much money as possible by contributing as little as possible to the ecosystem, well - their fault, you can sue them.

Except this is (allegedly) Microsoft versus Lotus / WordPerfect / NetScape etc all over again.

Lying or misleading your co-opetition is a serious market offense - called "monopolisation", and from what I can tell, this fits it to a T. The resulting damage to the public is serious, and even 30 - 40 years after the event I would say computing is still not recovered from the damage MS did. Do you really want to see the same long-lasting damage in the Wordpress arena?

The WP Engine claim is basically that Automattica told the markets one thing, and then failed to deliver, enticing their competition to rely on promises that meant nothing. In other words, blatant AntiTrust.

Whether a prosecutor wants to take those claims up, we'll have to see, Whether those claims will hold water, I don't know. But they are clear claims of AntiTrust, and Market Manipulation. Which are clear threats to the public.

Cheers,
Wol